Appcelerator Mobile Dev – Ch 1: Installing Titanium

The one thing about Appcelerator that impressed me is how easy it is to get Titanium Studio installed and up and running. There are many tutorials on how to do this. Instead of me re-writing what’s already been written many times, I’ll just be referencing the Documentation I found most helpful and providing my own quick how-to.

The following link will explain the entire process for installing and setting up Titanium Studio. For this post, i’ll be dividing the process into a few simple steps:

In order to use Titanium Studio, you will need to register with Appcelerator. This is not only necessary to download Titanium Studio, but you will also be required to log in with your account Username and Password when opening Titanium Studio.

Titanium Studio is available for Mac (including Mountain Lion), Windows, Linux 32 Bit and Linux 64 Bit. Once you’ve registered on Appcelerator’s site you can click here to download the Studio.

Step 3 – Installing Titanium Studio

For Mac and Windows, installing the Studio is very simple. I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t installed the Studio on Linux, but it seems to be as easy as unpacking the Zip File.

There’s a second phase to installing Titanium Studio. Once you’ve installed it and logged into the Studio, you’ll need to download the latest updates and plugins. You can achieve this by click on the “Help” Menu item on top, followed by clicking on “Check for Titanium Updates“. After all Titanium Updates have been downloaded and installed (Restart of Titanium Studio might be required), repeat the process by clicking on “Help\Check for Updates“. This second option is for the plugins and are compulsory if you want make use of the Alloy Framework, etc.

NOTE: For Windows, you need to be running IE9 or above, else you’ll receive a stupid error after logging into Titanium Studio. It seems that the Appcelerator Dashboard that gets loaded by default doesn’t support IE8 or below.

Step 4: Configuring the SDKs

This Series focuses only on iOS and Android development. Most likely toward the end of this year I’ll publish a series on Windows Mobile and Blackberry Development, depending on when Appcelerator releases the official versions. (Blackberry last I checked is still in Beta).

If you’re running on Mac, you’ll be able to run the iOS and Android SDK. For Windows, you’ll only be able to run the Android SDK. The reason for this is because to develop for iOS you need XCode which only ships with Mac OS. I know some of you are thinking that at least you can run the iOS Simulator, but this is not the case. Titanium Studio does not have its own built in Simulators, but instead uses the Simulators that ship with the relevant SDKs. This is bad news for those who want to test on iPhone on a Windows environment, but if you look on the bright side….if a new version of the iOS or Android SDK gets released, you’ll immediately benefit by testing on that new SDK’s simulator.

Now, before people decide that they will rather pass on Titanium Studio because they only wanted to develop for iOS, there is a silver lining. The way Titanium works, and I’ll explain this in my next chapter, you develop for Android and iOS at the same time. As I said i’ll leave this for the next chapter and will explain it in more detail, but bottom line is: While you’re coding for Android, you’re actually coding for iOS as well, with a few small exceptions.

Coming back to the SDKs….to configure the iOS SDK, make sure you have the latest release of XCode installed on your Mac. This is a huge, but free download from the App Store. You’ll also need Java’s JRE Installed, but Mac is awesome enough to prompt you when relevant to install the JRE and it’ll do everything for you.

To configure the Android SDK is even easier. In Titanium Studio, open up the Dashboard if it’s not already open. (In the Top Toolbar, look for the red triangular Icon with an “a” inside it)

Once the Dashboard is open, click on the Tab “Get Started“, then on the green Android Icon, then finally on the “Update Android SDK“.

Here is where you can select which Android SDKs you want to download and use for testing and Deployment.

Once the above-mentioned is complete, then you’re good to go. You might require some restarts to Titanium Studio and your Operating System.

There is an easy way to quickly test an App on iOS and on Android. Click here to view a quick tutorial on creating and running your first basic app on iOS and Android. Titanium Studio comes with a few basic Templates when creating a New Project. I recommend using the “Tabbed Application” Template when creating a new Titanium Classic Project. Once you’ve provided some basic info and the project is created, you can immediately build the Project to run on iPhone, iPad or Android without adding a single line of code. This will be enough to confirm that everything is working.

In my next Post, I’ll discuss Appcelerator and Titanium in a bit more detail, and why I chose to invest time learning and understanding this Framework.